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Not that anyone else would be interested, but yesterday, while I was idly whiling away the hours surfing the net (when I should have been working), and indulging my curiosity about DNA testing, one thing led to another, and another, and another, and the next thing I knew, I was deep into reading every other web-site on human evolution. Anyway, here’s what I found, in no particular order of importance.
Did you know that …
About 73, 000 years ago, we (human beings) almost went extinct? Some experts say that as few as FORTY people survived a great cataclysm and went on to re-populate the entire earth. (Other experts say that the number was as many as 4,000.) Imagine that! We almost went the way of dinosaurs – and, we all owe our existence to less than 4,000 people.
The great cataclysm that almost did us in, according to Professor Stanley H. Ambrose of the University of Illinois, was a HUGE volcanic eruption in Indonesia some 73,000 years ago. The volcano that erupted was Mt. Toba in present day Sumatra.
Now some might ask, “What’s the big deal? Volcanoes erupt all the time.” True. But whereas Mt. St. Helens spewed out one cubic kilometer of ash, Mt. Toba spewed out 2,800 times the ash of Mt. St. Helens. By comparison, there was another volcano which erupted in 1815 and caused “the year without a summer” in 1816. That volcano was called Mt. Tambora, and its 1815 eruption is the largest eruption recorded in modern history. Now, get this, Mt. Tambora spewed out about 100 cubic kilometers of ash (that’s about 3% of the amout that Mt. Toba spewed out). Anyhow, you get the comparative killing power of Mt Toba. By the way, the 1815 eruption caused crop failures throughout New England and northern Europe the following year, since there was “no summer” (i.e.- no growing season).
The experts say that Mt. Toba immediately covered the entire sub-continent of India, along with most of southeast asia and the middle east, with anywhere from 2 to 18 feet of ash. So, a great many people would have died immediately; like in the Roman city of Pompei, when Mt Vesuvius erupted.
Even though the ash settled shortly, the sulphur remained in the atmosphere and caused six years of winter. Basically, the suplhur reflected solar radiation back out into outer space instead of allowing it to penetrate to earth, and thus caused the temperature worldwide to drop about 20 degrees farenheit. These dramatically lowered worldwide temperatures lasted for one thousand years, and, at the end of which, an Ice Age began to cover much of North America and Eurpoe.
Pretty horrible conditions, heh?
It’s thought that the only people to survive would have been a few pockets of people who lived near equatorial Africa.
Now, for years I’ve been aware that a genetic “bolltleneck” occurred sometime in our species past because of our lack of genetic diversity (all human beings, regardless of race, are almost identical genetically). However, I never knew about Mt. Toba until yesterday. So, anyhow these 40/4,000 people who survived Mt Toba and the 6 years of winter, and the thousand year deep freeze, became our Adams and Eves.
Now, I forgot the source, but I also read somewhere yesterday that after DNA testing (with a sample size of over 2,000 people) that about 90% of all European men trace back (via their y-chromosome DNA) to just 10 men from about 40,000 years ago, and that about 90% of all European women likewise trace back (via the mitochondrial DNA) to just 18 women from about 50,000 years ago.
Now, if the same holds true for Asia, Africa, and the “New World” (N. & S. America), then this human-near-extinction-Mt.-Toba hypothosis (sp?) has legs.
O.K. So, let’s say the Mt. Toba hypothosis (sp) is true, and that perhaps a couple of thousand persons from Africa re-populated the entire earth, my question is this; “Why then, don’t we all look African?” Well, it turns out, there’s a reason. (Now, I really don’t understand all the ins and outs of genetics, so I won’t get into all that. I’ll just pass along what the experts say.) The reason is due to something called the “Founder Effect,” and something called “Genetic Drift.”
The founder effect can be seen in small communities that have intermarried for a very long time, such as the Amish, where having six fingers and the occurrance of dwarfism is much much higher than in the larger general population. Apparently what happens is that very small differences in very small populations somehow greatly magnify themselves, and thus produce a large variety of differences (such as races) over a short amount of time. Apparently, this only happens when there is a population bottleneck.
Well, I’m going to wrap this up now. However, what occurs to me (and nowhere did I read anything about this by the experts), is that if Mt. Toba blacked out the sun for three months and caused six years of winters, and killed off virtually all plant and animal life, and killed off almost every single human being on the face of the earth, then wouldn’t stories of that event be handed down from generation to generation? Wouldn’t such a cataclysmic event have become part of every creation myth in every culture throughout the present day world? I think so. And yet, I know of no such myth; at least not in Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture. The only common myth we all seem to share is the flood legend.
If you think about it, 73,000 years ago is not that long ago. From right now to the beginning of recorded history (say about 3,000 b.c.) is only about 5,000 years, and that 5,000 years represents about 1/15th of the time span between Mt. Toba’s eruption and now.
Actually, now that I think about it, in Genesis, in the Bible, God does speak of dividing the day into light and dark and calling the light good. Maybe that’s an allusion to the three or so months of blocked out sun.
And maybe being cast out of the Garden of Eden was an allusion to not having any more food sources.
I don’t know.
Any thoughts?
Check out this web site http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/
It’s very good. It’s an interactive map of the world that not only shows a series of migrations out of Africa, it also shows the regional prevailing climate for that time period as well as nodes you can click on for reading significant sidebar information.
I’d be particularly interested in what others have to say after clicking on (1) the Luzia node (Luzia is in Brazil), and (2) the Meadowcroft node (Meadowcroft is in Pennsylvania).
I’d also be interested in opinions about the Clovis node.
All three nodes describe the migration/settlement patterns of North as well as South American Indians. I personally don’t subscribe to the 11,500 years-ago-earliest-entry-into-North-America-for-American-Indians-time-frame that the Clovis school propounds. I’ve always thought we got here as early as as 30,000 years ago.
Oh yes. I forgot. Click on the Gates of Grief node. I wonder if the migration out of Africa (Ethiopia) to Arabia (Yemen) (just 20 miles across the Red Sea) via the Gates of Grief (during an Ice Age when the Red Sea would have been 240 feet lower, and thus only plus-or-minus, two or three miles wide) is the actual basis for the biblical story of Moses and his crossing of the Red Sea? I know that the biblical story involves the Pharaoh chasing them, but couldn’t that have been the hazy tribal/cultural memory of two separate events juxtaposed one upon the other?
About th volcano on Sumatra — such a great volcano on an island might have caused an equally distructive Tsunami? Even wiht pumps it has taken weeks to drain New Orleans. Without pumps it might have taken much longer to drain pockets of water from a great worldwide Tsunami.
About being driven from the Garden of Eden — now this is fanciful speculation . . . the Bible says “flamiing swords turning every which way” were put at the gates to the garden to prevent men from returning to it.
The Aurora Borialis circles the North Polar regions and appear in the sky as a circle of light as seen from space — could it also be the “flaming swords that turn every which way”? The Bering straight is the means htey say men came to North America . . . The story is found in the Old world, not the New. Could this story show in ancient times people in the Old World knew the land in the New World wa a land “flowing with milk and honey”, but they no longer knew how to get to it?
vance
Use the following for a “key word” search:
(1) Sumerian King’s List
NOTE #1: The Sumerian Civilization was the FIRST civilization on earth. The ancient Sumerians appear in ancient Mesopotania circa 3500 b.c. (circa 5,500 years ago).
NOTE #2: Note the time spans of the reigns of the first ten kings.
(2) Anunnaki
(3) Nibiru
(4) Enuma Elish
(5) The book of “Genesis” in the Bible (chapters one through 6)
(6) Dr. Zecharia Sitchin
Everything I thought I knew is turned upside down. Right is wrong. Wrong is right. The serpent tried to save us ; God tried to drown us.
Who should we trust?
I had always been taught that not only did neanderthals die out 30,000 years ago, but that humans (homo sapiens) and neanderthals could not mate. I guess I may have been wrong.
Well, that is if the case of Zana Genaba is true.
Here’s the link.
Oops. Bad link. Try this.
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures.htm
and click on “Zana, the story of” at the very end.
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